ART TO HEART
Modern brides are using intricate henna art designs to tell their stories,
It’s a scorching summer afternoon in Brampton and the home of Neesha Joshi’s uncle is undergoing a festive transformation as the family prepares to host 250 guests in the first of four wedding celebrations. Joshi sits patiently at the table of her uncle’s dining room, forearms upturned on a stiff leather pillow while henna artist Divya Patel executes an intricate design in the palm of Joshi’s right hand. “Does he have a beard?” Patel asks. “Yes, a moustache — everything,” Joshi replies. “I was away for a year and I came back to a full-blown beard,” she says with a laugh, explaining how she just recently returned from a solo year abroad teaching English in Weifang, China.
Patel continues her design, depicting a hirsute groom on Joshi’s right palm — a portrait of her fiancé, Deepak Kande, to match the bride on Joshi’s left hand, who is dressed as she will be for her wedding ceremony in just two days.
Above the groom’s portrait, a Chinese wedding symbol known as double happiness is found in Joshi’s Mehndi design. “China was such an important part of my life and it helped shape me, so I thought I should incorporate that into my Mehndi as well,” Joshi explains. It’s just one way that today’s brides are taking the age-old tradition of Mehndi and modernizing the custom with personal touches.
Patel, who has been working as a henna artist since she was a teenager, has had all manner of requests for Mehndi customizations.
“A lot of brides want to tell their story through their Mehndi and to incorporate little elements in their design that represent the bride and the groom,” Patel explains.
Ayear ago she completed a design for a bride that included the Golden Gate Bridge on her right forearm and the Toronto skyline on the left with a plane in flight.
It signified how the couple met while at school in Toronto and have since moved to San Francisco for work. The design served as a “Save the Date” message for wedding guests — another creative way that brides are updating henna traditions.
“I recently had a bride who wanted a motorcycle in her Mehndi because her fiancé had this motorcycle that he really loved,” Patel explains. “He proposed to her in New York so we incorporated the ‘LOVE’ sign but the ‘O’ was an engagement ring.”
The tradition of henna goes back multiple centuries when it was first discovered that a paste made from the dried leaves of the henna plant had a cooling effect on the body. Brides would dip their feet in henna to relax before their big day.
“There’s no one culture that owns henna. It’s embedded in so many cultures and so many traditions.” NADINE DAFRAWY HENNA ARTIST
“It was a way to cool them down before their wedding — it got rid of nervousness and calmed them down,” says Patel.
The paste naturally stains the skin and artists discovered ways to turn this therapeutic tradition into an art form. “When my mom was growing up, the way they did Mehndi was by dipping toothpicks in the paste,” Patel says. “My mom told me that her grandmother used to use thread as well. They would dip the thread and use it to create fine lines.”
As the art form progressed, artists developed the technique of filling cellophane cones with paste, allowing for a more detailed and precise delivery. Designs became even more intricate and dense — an important characteristic as many South Asian cultures retain a superstition that the darker your Mehndi stains become, the more your husband, or motherin-law, will love you.
Jag Brar, a wedding planner at Fusion Events, has been organizing South Asian weddings for a dozen years. Brar has noticed how the trend has regressed back to simpler, cleaner designs. “10 years ago, bridal henna application was much heavier,” Brar explains.
“The design itself was much more intricate and detailed. In recent years, it has become more fun — less heavy.”
“Instead of paisleys and leaves and flowers you’re seeing intricate portraits, larger mandalas with a simpler design on the rest of the hands, sometimes portraits of pets or skylines of cities and team logos.”
For henna artist Nadine Dafrawy, inspiration is derived from her previous career as a graphic designer as she incorporates more geometric shapes and designs into her work.
“Henna was like an outlet. It was a form of meditation for me,” explains Dafrawy, who started experimenting with henna just four years ago.
Dafrawy, who hails from Cairo, Egypt, grew up with the Arab tradition of henna which favours simpler designs in subtler locations — the shoulder or ankle, for example. The vast majority of brides that Dafrawy books are of South Asian descent but she’s discovered more interest in henna art from all cultures.
“Some of my favourite henna artists are not South Asian,” Dafrawy admits.
Namita Rajani, a lawyer who received henna when she was married three years ago, is happy that people of all cultures are embracing the traditions she grew up with. “As an Indian person, I’m glad to see that it’s just not Indian people that are doing it or getting it done,” Rajani says.
As part of her work and interest in henna, Dafrawy has researched the history of her art form. “There’s no documentation of how henna was originated,” she says. “It’s been popularized by (South Asian communities) in weddings and Mehndi parties but there’s no one culture that owns henna. It’s embedded in so many cultures and so many traditions.”
While Mehndi might have traditionally been done alongside the female members of the bride’s family during a party, most modern brides get their Mehndi done just prior to these celebrations. Patel’s appointment with Joshi is strategically timed so that the design will be complete just as the Sangeet — an evening of singing and dancing — begins.
After three-and-a-half hours, Patel moves onto the tops of Joshi’s feet, allowing her forearms and palms to dry before decorating the back of her hands. The entire process takes more than five hours but Joshi remains calm and content, even as the dining room slowly fills with members of her family arriving for the Sangeet.
Joshi’s mother wanders into the room to check in with the bride.
“That’s beautiful,” the elder Joshi remarks in admiration of Patel’s work. “I’ve never seen stuff like that before.” “No wonder you wanted to have her for henna.”